In a cellular or other wireless network, information regarding radio coverage is instructive for purposes of optimizing the coverage. In this regard, information regarding the radio coverage may be useful for network planning, network optimization, radio resource management parameter optimization and other purposes. Armed with this information, the radio coverage may be enhanced which, in turn, may have a meaningful impact upon the service that may be provided to customers within a particular region.
In order to determine the coverage provided by a radio network, drive tests have been conducted to collect information about the radio coverage. Drive tests may be conducted on a periodic basis and/or in response to certain events. For example, drive tests may be conducted in conjunction with the deployment of a new base station. In this regard, drive tests may be performed both prior to and following service activation of a new base station. The drive tests may collect a variety of measurement data including radio environment measurements such as downlink pilot measurements, transmit power headroom measurements, measurements associated with a random access failure, measurements associated with a paging channel failure and measurements associated with a broadcast channel failure. Based upon the measurement data, initial area tuning may be performed, such as by selection of an appropriate antenna for the new cell, adjustment of antenna tilting of the new base station and neighboring base stations, adjusting the base station transmit power and the like. Following deployment of a new base station, further drive tests may be performed with the resulting measurement data collected by these further drive tests being utilized to provide further area tuning.
Drive tests may also be conducted before and/or after the construction of a new highway, railway or a major building since such construction projects generally represent regions which will experience a population increase which further incents the provision of improved coverage. Additionally, large construction projects may also create new sources of shadowing losses and may need to be addressed to ensure adequate coverage, such as by deploying new base stations, adjusting antenna tilting of existing base stations or the like. Drive tests may also be performed in response to complaints or other issues raised by customers that indicate coverage and/or throughput concerns.
The measurement data collected during drive tests may not only be utilized to effect coverage optimization, but may also be used for a number of other purposes. For example, the measurement data collected during drive tests may be utilized for mobility optimization, capacity optimization, parameterization for common channels, quality of service verification and the like.
For network operators, however, the manual drive tests may disadvantageously cause significant operational costs. For example, drive testing may require the intensive use of the personnel of the network operation and testing may be repeated whenever there are changes in the network topology or configuration.